Race recaps, projections, and how our calls actually did, for NASCAR Cup, O'Reilly, and Trucks.
Reddick spun through the grass and still finished 3rd at Las Vegas after a rough Chase. He has the best Charlotte average finish of anyone entered, and the market likes him more than our sim does.
Joey Logano has 4 Las Vegas wins, the most of anyone entered, and finished 20th from the pole at Kansas while his 2 teammates finished 2nd and 5th. Nobody knows which Fords show up Sunday.
Hamlin and Larson are both +400 to win Kansas, where 8 of the 9 winners since 2022 started inside the top 10 and the laps leader lost 7 of those 9. 2 favorites, and the 2 different ways either of them wins it.
Six drivers have separated from the field over the last 5 Bristol races, the books price 5 of them that way, and Chase Briscoe is the one you can still get at +1100 and $9,900.
Our locked sims for Saturday's Nu Way 225 and Sunday's Enjoy Illinois 300, every car entered, ranked by projected finish. Justin Allgaier is the biggest favorite on either table, and Denny Hamlin and Ryan Blaney share the top of the Cup one.
4 Joe Gibbs Toyotas and 2 Penske Fords win 71% of our 10,000 runs of Sunday's race, and Saturday's grid sorts them. Logano is the win bet we like, and Byron is the top-10 play nobody is talking about.
The market has Denny Hamlin the favorite for the Southern 500. Our 10,000 runs give more wins to Tyler Reddick, and the laps leader has lost 9 of the last 11.
Kyle Larson's 1,070 laps led and 1 win, Denny Hamlin's 5 wins, a lap that gets 1.07 seconds slower over a green-flag run, and the Southern 500 record book before the Chase opener.
Median finish, laps led, projected DraftKings points, ceiling, value, and win odds for the full field in both Daytona races, from 10,000 race simulations.
NASCAR rebuilt the rules package for this one race, there is no practice to test it, and the last three Chase spots get decided at the track that already ruins everybody's plans.
Median finish, laps led, projected DraftKings points, ceiling, value, and win odds for the full field in both New Hampshire races, from 10,000 race simulations.
Josh Berry owns the best New Hampshire record of anyone entered and one top five finish all season. What 170 drivers in the same spot since 2005 say about Sunday, and how the rest of our table answers it.
Median finish, laps led, projected DraftKings points, ceiling, value, and win odds for the full field in both Richmond races, from 10,000 race simulations.
The pole drought, the tire story, Hamlin's 2,367 laps led, and what actually wins on NASCAR's 0.75-mile D-oval. Forty races of data since 2005.
Richmond honors Kyle Busch this weekend, Goodyear brings a tire built to wear out, and the market is paying Austin Dillon for a story. What forty races of data say about Saturday night.
Ryan Blaney has never finished worse than fourth at Iowa. The mustache's case, Hamlin's paradox, the Toyota question, and full projections for both races.
Seventeen starts and four third-place finishes at the only crown jewel he has never won, and the numbers that say Sunday is different. Plus a two-race chart crime from the Track DNA file, the new right-side tire nobody has data on, and Layne Riggs back at the track where he led 160 of 200 laps.
Eight straight top 10s and the best flat-track numbers in the field, a 450-lap race where laps led decide the scoring, and the track-shape reason the sim is cool on Reddick. Plus Corey Heim's 303 laps led in the Truck race.
Predicting Atlanta comes down to two numbers
Cup racing returns to Chicagoland after seven years. Our model says Larson's 42-race winless streak ends Sunday, plus the buy-low on Byron and the fade on Gibbs.
Corey Heim, the reigning Truck champion running a part-time Cup schedule before he goes full-time next year, ran down points leader Tyler Reddick in the final two laps. The drivers everybody loved, Shane van Gisbergen included, were already in the garage after a nine-car wreck. We had van Gisbergen ranked first. He finished 38th.
